China indicted: Human dignity is indivisible

Par The Hon. David Kilgour
le 26 juin 2008

In recent weeks, the world has witnessed catastrophes of nature in China and Burma beyond the ability of mostof us to comprehend. For what happened in Sichuan province, the thoughts, sympathies and prayers of all of us go unreservedly to all families of the victims and survivors...

But no-one should confuse the
Chinese people with their unelected government. The differences many of us have
with the latter in terms of human dignity, good governance, rule of law,
freedom of speech and democracy have nothing to do with our regard for the
former. The party-state of China persecutes large communities of its own
citizens: Falun Gong, democracy activists, ethnic minorities, world religions,
Tibetan Buddhists, Muslim Uighurs and Christians, human rights defenders,
journalists who write the truth, and internet bloggers. The government of China
is among the worst human rights violators.

The Falun Gong
community, which began in 1992 as a blend of ancient Chinese spiritual and
exercise traditions, since mid-1999 has been persecuted more and worse than any
other group. David Matas and I concluded in an independent study after
examining 53 kinds of proof, that since 2001 the government of China and its
agencies have killed thousands of Falun Gong practitioners, without any form of
prior trial, and then sold their vital organs for large sums of money, often to
'organ tourists' from wealthy countries (Our report is available in nineteen
languages at www.organharvest investigation.net).

How the International Olympic
Committee could award the 2008 Olympic Games to such a regime is thus difficult
to understand. The focus in article is on China`s close partnerships with some
of the most despotic governments on earth, which enable them to better oppress
their own people and to increase thereby the risk to world peace in various
regions of the world.

Sudan: “A crime scene”

The genocide in Sudan's province
of Darfur ongoing since April, 2003 has in all probability cost the lives of
more than 400,000 African Darfurians from bombs, bullets and related causes,
such as starvation. Beijing continues to assist Sudan's president Omar
al-Bashir in numerous ways, including, financing and supplying arms in exchange
for taking most of Sudan's oil production at much-reduced prices. It officially
sold about $80 million in weapons, aircraft and spare parts to Sudan during
2005 alone. This included A-5 Fantan bomber aircraft, helicopter gunships, K-8
military attack aircraft and light weapons, all of which are found in Darfur,
transferred there in violation of UN resolutions.

China's
government has long used the threat of its permanent veto at the UN Security
Council to block effective UN peace activities in Darfur. In reality, this veto
and many innocent lives are being traded for cheap oil. Months ago, Bashir
appointed Musa Hilal, the one-time leader of the murderous militia, the
Janjaweed, to a position in his government. Hilal has been quoted expressing
gratitude for "the necessary weapons and ammunition to exterminate the
African tribes in Darfur." Not long ago, the Sudanese military ambushed a
well-marked U.N. peacekeeping convoy in Darfur, later claiming it was a
mistake. Virtually every independent observer says it was a deliberate attack.

Bashir's refusal
to accept the UN-proposed roster of troops and civilian police-contributing
countries, including an engineering battalion from Sweden/ Norway, units from
Nepal, and a fully-equipped operation from Thailand, reflects nothing other
than his political decision to deny UNAMID the personnel essential for an
effective peace mission in Darfur. Last week, the chief prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told the Security Council:
"The entire Darfur region is a crime scene", adding that 100,000
Dafurians had been displaced so far this year. Explaining his comparison to
Nazi Germany, Ocampo added, according to the BBC, "Sudanese officials
protect the criminals and not the victims. Denial of crimes, cover up, and
attempts to shift responsibility are another characteristic of the criminal
plan in Darfur." It is to be hoped that Canada supports the long overdue
Costa Rican initiative on Darfur underway now at the Security Council.

Burma: “Blood for oil”

It is easy to forget important
realities about Burma, including the fact that its post-independence fledgling
democracy was toppled in 1962 by the military dictatorship of Ne Win, who
believed that he and the military would win the 1960 general election. In 1988,
there were widespread pro-democracy riots and an estimated 3000 students and
monks were killed by the army. A determined and brave Aung San Suu Kyi made her
first speech during the '88 uprising as an opposition leader. The out-of-touch junta
called yet another election two years later in 1990. Suu Kyi and her National
League for Democracy (NLD) won 81% of the seats and 67% of the votes cast in
1990. No-one was allowed to take their seat by the generals and Suu Kyi has
remained under house arrest for most of the past eighteen years. The UN Special
rapporteur confirmed as a "state instigated massacre" the attack on
Suu Kyi's procession in May 2003 northwest of Mandalay, when about 100 people
were killed, including the NLD photographers, and she was herself wounded.

In what later
became pro-democracy protests last September, junta troops fired automatic
weapons at peaceful demonstrators and entered monasteries to beat and murder
Buddhist monks who had protested. Nuns and monks who helped lead the
demonstrations were caged in barbed-wire enclosures. A foreign journalist was
also killed. The junta had earlier received a $1.4 billion package of arms from
Beijing. It is clear where the fatal bullets and guns were made.

Meanwhile at the United Nations
Security Council, the representatives of China and Russia, who had earlier used
their vetoes to remove Burma from its agenda (after keeping it off continuously
since the crises of 1990 and 1988 in the country until late 2005) prevented the
Council from considering sanctions against the perpetrators. The two
governments even managed to keep the Council from issuing a condemnation of the
junta's use of deadly force. China provided no leadership towards a peaceful
resolution of the uprising in what has become in effect, like Sudan, a client
state of Beijing.

As Dr. Peter
Navarro puts the situation in the new edition of his book, “The Coming China
Wars”, what we have currently in Burma is another "blood for oil"
deal. Beijing protects the generals in exchange for the lion's share of the
country's natural gas, which measure over a half a trillion cubic meters, and,
far more importantly, it gets to build a $2 billion oil pipeline from Burma's
coast on the Bay of Bengal to China's Yunnan province. This will allow China to
take delivery of Middle East oil without passing through the narrow Strait of
Malacca, which could be shut down in the case of a serious conflict with the
West.

North Korea: “The hermit kingdom”

The hermit kingdom of Kim Jong Il
rivals that of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe for any "worst governance"
award today (It is no coincidence that Beijing supports both regimes, although
its attempt to ship $70 million in arms to Mugabe after he lost the recent
first round of the presidential election was blocked when dock workers in South
Africa refused to unload ships carrying the weapons and were supported by their
national courts.). According to the International Crisis Group (ICG) in
Brussels, China now does about $2 billion in annual bilateral and investment—approx.
40% of the kingdom's foreign trade—with North Korea. About 150 Chinese
companies operate in North Korea. There are currently about two million ethnic
Koreans living in China and 10,000-100,000 refugees at any point in time.

The ICG asserts
that the government of China's priorities with the government in Pyong Yang
currently include: avoiding the costs of an explosion on the Korean peninsula;
preventing the U.S. from dominating a unified Korea; incorporating North Korea
into the development plans of its three northeastern provinces to help them
achieve stability; achieving credit in China, in the region and in the US
for being engaged in achieving denuclearization; maintaining the two-Korea
status quo, as long as it can maintain influence in both capitals as
leverage with the US on the Taiwan issue, and; avoiding a situation where a
nuclear North Korea leads Japan and/or Taiwan to become nuclear powers.

As Peter Navarro
notes, nothing is likely to dissuade Kim from his bad habits, which include
counterfeiting U.S. currency, acting as a conduit for drug and arms commerce,
and periodically threatening South Korea with an invasion of Seoul. Navarro
writes, "North Korea is able to engage in all this rogue behaviour precisely
because of its ability to hide behind Chinese skirts. China currently provides
the Pyongyang regime with two-thirds of its fuel and one third of its
food…The one certainty in this relationship is its lack of any certainty. This
translates into high risk—the proverbial nuclear joker in the deck. Should
famine, a dictator's whim, or any number of random events trigger a North
Korean military outburst, it would force China to take sides. The result may
well be “the Korean War, Part Deux.”. A cheerless thought indeed!

Iran

Human dignity abuses by the
Iranian government currently include persecution of ethnic and religious
minorities (Arabs, Azeri, Kurds, Turks, Baha'is, Jews and Christians), women in
a species of gender apartheid (under Sharia law the life of a woman is worth
half that of a man), imprisonment, torture and execution of political prisoners
and prisoners of conscience and complete control over the media.

In trading with
Iran, China and other countries doing so legitimize its government and help to
maintain regime officials in positions of absolute power. Trade and investment
from abroad also provide to Tehran funds that often are used for the funding of
terrorist groups abroad, including Hezbollah and Hamas, under the mantle of
"expanding the Islamic Empire".

China-Iranian
trade has grown from $200 million in 1990 to $10 billion in 2005. This includes
conventional arms and ballistic missiles for Iran despite Tehran's declared
hostility to 'godless communism" and Beijing's continuing severe persecution
of its Uyghur Muslims. Beijing simply ignores theocratic rule in Tehran. A
major attraction for Tehran is Beijing's permanent seat on the UN Security
Council, which is useful for resisting Western pressure on nuclear and other
issues.

Ali Hashemi
Rafsanjani pushed the relationship while Iran's president (1989-1997) and
became a stakeholder in it. A Chinese contract to build the Tehran metro has as
its local partner a company headed by his oldest son. He and others in Iran
strongly favour the 'China model' of air tight political control while
encouraging economic growth. In the mid 1990's, China became the leading
supplier of conventional arms to Iran and has since provided assistance on
developing dual use technology that can be converted to developing nuclear
weapons. In 1995, China under pressure from the U.S. did stop the sale of
nuclear reactors to Iran. There appears little doubt that China has since
resumed nuclear weapon technology sales to Iran.

There are also
indications that China has helped with Iran's Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 medium
range ballistic missiles. Both are capable of hitting any state in the Middle
East; the Shahab-4 could hit significant portions of Europe. Two years ago, the
U.S. imposed penalties on eight Chinese companies for exporting material that
can be used to improve Iran's ballistic missile capability.

China's goal of
securing a reliable source of cheap oil and gas is probably being hindered
rather than helped by its weapons sales to Iran by inserting a destabilizing
element into Middle East domestic affairs, but also encouraging the United
States to continue its extensive military presence there to deter Iran's use of
force.

Canada initiated
the successfully-passed UN General Assembly resolution in late 2007, which drew
attention to numerous human rights abuses in Iran, including confirmed
instances of: torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,
including, flogging and amputations;public executions, including multiple
public executions, and of other executions carried out in the absence of
respect for internationally recognized safeguards; stoning as a method of
execution, and the continued issuing of sentences of stoning; execution of
persons who were under the age of 18 at the time their offence was committed,
contrary to the obligations of the Islamic Republic of Iran under article 37 of
the Convention on the Rights of the Child and article 6 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; arrests, violent repression, and sentencing
of women exercising their right to peaceful assembly, a campaign of
intimidation against women's human rights defenders, and continuing
discrimination against women and girls in law and in practice; increasing
discrimination and other human rights violations against persons belonging to
religious, ethnic, linguistic or other minorities, recognized or otherwise,
including, inter alia, Arabs, Azeri's, Baluchis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Sufis
and Sunni Muslims and their defenders.

We might all keep
in mind too on the issue of Sino-Iranian relations and their current negative
implications for world security that in the past few weeks alone the Government
in Tehran has locked up all seven senior leaders of the country's
300,000-member Baha'i spiritual community. Not a word has been heard about them
for almost four weeks. It also fired missiles at the approx 4000 UN-protected
residents, including about sixty Canadians, living in Ashraf city, Iraq. This
second act was clearly an act of war; the first violated a host of
international covenants, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which protects freedom of religion.

Mia Farrow,
Steven Spielberg, Uma Thurman and many others have already stood up for human
dignity in the face of the 2008 Olympics. Is Minky Worden of Human Rights Watch
not correct when she says that corporate sponsors, governments and National
Olympic Committees should urge Beijing to improve human rights conditions in
China? "Olympic corporate sponsors are putting their reputations at risk
unless they work to convince the Chinese government to uphold the human rights
pledges it made to bring the Games to Beijing," she said. "Human
rights are under attack in China, and Olympic sponsors should use their considerable
leverage to persuade Beijing to change policy." The rest of us should too.
We are asking the government of China to honour the promises made when it bid
for the Games. If you agree, please press our own government and our own
national Olympic Committee to urge the government of China to fulfill it
commitments.